1. Technical Field
The invention is related to two-way voice communications, and more particularly to a system and process for conducting two-way voice communications between a user and a remote party over a communication link using a communication device having a user interface and a display, where the remote party speaks but the user does not
2. Background Art
The use of mobile voice communication devices, such as cell phones, is commonplace today. However, answering a call is not possible in some situations where the user cannot speak out loud, such as in a meeting, library, restaurant, and the like. However, the call may be important and require immediate attention. This quandary has led to scenarios such as placing a cell phone in silent mode so that it vibrates instead of producing an audible call alert. When the phone vibrates indicating a call is coming in, the user will often excuse himself or herself, and either move to a location where they can talk, or answer the phone and tell the caller they will call back. Regardless, the result is that people around the user are disturbed by either action. For example, in the case of a meeting, the absence of the user to attend to a call, or even a brief pause while the user tells the caller he or she will call back, can break the cadence of the discussions and result in wasting valuable time. Thus, there is a need for a way of answering a call in such situations and carry on at least a rudimentary conversation with the caller to ascertain what the call is about or make arrangements to talk later, without disrupting people in the surroundings. In other words, to provide some way of communicating with the calling party without talking.
There are some existing systems primarily designed for speech impaired individuals that allows them to answer a call, and using a computer and its keyboard, type in responses to the caller's queries. These systems are generally referred to a Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems. In these systems, the typed responses are used to generate synthesized speech, which is transmitted to the calling party. However, such a scheme is too time consuming to carry on seamless conversations, and is impractical for use with mobile voice communication devices such as cell phones. The present invention resolves these issues.